Matthew Anderson
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Film Review: The Post
★★★☆☆ Censorship of the free press isn’t an invention of the Trump administration. In spite of the plumes of cigarette smoke, angry chattering of typewriter keys and now antiquated passage of information, which ground The Post in its milieu of early 1970s Washington DC, there are significant parallels to our own lamentable age of ‘fake…
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Film Review: Walk with Me
★★★☆☆ Much like the serene community of Zen Buddhists who have committed to a life of tranquility and inner calm under the tutelage of mindfulness guru Thich Nhat Hanh, enjoyment of meditative documentary Walk with Me depends largely on whether or not a viewer is prepared to sign up to the program. In the verdant…
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Film Review: Hostiles
★★★☆☆ Venturing into its blood-soaked history and the atrocities which shaped American society, Scott Cooper’s Hostiles is an unflinching exploration of the unspeakable cruelty of which human kind is capable, and culpable. However, in contrast to the pessimism of a D. H. Lawrence quote which prefaces a truly galling opening sequence, there is the slightest…
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Film Review: The Prince of Nothingwood
★★★☆☆ The phrase “Do you know who I am?” takes on a new meaning in Sonia Kronlund’s The Prince of Nothingwood, an idiosyncratic documentary revealing an unseen side to Afghan life and culture. For though a global audience may have little prior knowledge of prolific B-movie filmmaker Salim Shaheen, every man and his dog in…
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VOD Review: No Stone Unturned
★★★☆☆ Alex Gibney’s latest project, No Stone Unturned, is a mysterious, gripping re-opening of the unsolved 1994 Loughinisland massacre investigation. It is told with characteristic precision, compassion and determination by its prolific director. Searching for needles in haystacks has long been Gibney’s metier but here the smoke and mirrors of governmental complicity and the thick…
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Film Review: North by Northwest
★★★★★ Trouble lurks around every corner in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller North by Northwest. Sinister motives, international espionage and a captivating beauty have ad exec Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) on the run from the law across the USA.Throughout his career the Master of Suspense frequently pushed innocent, unsuspecting men into hot water. From The 39…
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DVD Review: Loving Vincent
★★★★☆ Meticulously crafted over a seven-year period, Loving Vincent is a visually wondrous biographical ode to the great impressionist and an animation like no other, comprised of 65,000 frames individually hand-painted by over one hundred artists. The sheer ambition and scope of this labour of love is an astonishing achievement. The screen shimmers as a…
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Film Review: Zama
★★★★★ Based on Antonio di Benedetto’s 1956 novel, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama is a beguiling, haunting, comic indictment of the ills of colonialism. Centred on the existential woes of a lowly magistrate, it examines the crushing stasis and ultimate evil of empire. An allegorical reckoning of perpetual struggle, recounted to the eponymous Don Diego de Zama…
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Film Review: A Prayer Before Dawn
★★★★☆ Pulling no punches in telling the true story of Scouse ne’er-do-well Billy Moore’s three years in Bangkok’s infamous Klong Prem Prison, Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s A Prayer Before Dawn wins points for its unerring depiction of the brutality of incarceration in Thailand. The film is an unflinching, punishing spectacle which drops us in to the thick…
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#LFF 2017: Journeyman review
★★★☆☆ Few British actors can lay claim to the kind of performance which we have come to expect and appreciate from Paddy Considine. Journeyman, which Considine writes, directs and stars in as champion boxer Matty Burton, is further proof of his impressive versatility.Six years on from the near unanimous praise for his directorial debut Tyrannosaur,…